Good Things List No.62: Peonies, New Linens, Window Cleaning Miracle, Books & More

A monthly list of good things to see, buy, read and watch.

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This month marks the start of my favorite season! I know if I lived in a part of the country where summer means sweating and high humidity for days on end I might think differently, but for this western Oregon girl, summer is where it's at.

All my life I've thought that the blue skies against the green trees and hills is worth all the gray skies and rain we have the rest of the year (though that is less and less...).

It's just beautiful and I wait all year to be able to enjoy it in flip flops and tank tops - with no sweater in sight.

I love watering in the mornings in a t-shirt, wandering through the veggie garden to see what's available to eat, and clipping the newest flower that's blooming. Sigh.

So, what is your favorite season? (I do think I'm in the minority, lol.)

Good Things

Peonies

The peonies are blooming and there was enough to clip for a full vase this year!

If you didn't know, peonies take a while to establish and start producing - and they don't like to be transplanted, so you need to plant them where they will stay (usually for decades!).

This is towards then end of their bloom-life, but to give you an idea of how long you may need to wait for a good amount of blooms:

• The dark pink peony in the top right was planted here when we moved, but was in the middle of a lawn being taken over by grass and not very big. I transplanted it not knowing the color and waited for two years before it bloomed. It's been in this spot for four years now and produced a dozen blooms this year.
• The two pink bushes were planted two years ago and each produced 4-6 blooms this year.
• I also have two other very small bushes that I'm nursing along that started as very small mail order bare roots - I didn't know that they would be that small.

And with our deer that seem to eat everything but lavender and herbs, they really do leave peonies alone! Maybe I need to plant more??

New Spring-Summer Bed Linens

I was looking for something a bit different for our bedroom for spring and summer - especially wanting to move away from the creamy white matelasse coverlet we had that seemed to be a magnet for our dog's paw prints.

I saw an inspiration photo in a magazine with a dark green coverlet/bedspread and floral duvet and pillows and recreated it with what I could find online.

We love it - the green coverlet is actually listed as a blanket, but it's a nice lightweight cover for the warmer months - and it does the job of hiding paw prints!

I put a light quilt in the duvet so on cooler nights I have something to pull up that's not a heavy comforter.

And it immediately freshened the room and gave it a whole new look.

Here's what I bought:

• 100% Cotton Waffle Weave Blanket - this comes in lots of different colors and I got the king for our queen bed to cover the sides better (I turn it and then turn down the top).
• 100% cotton waffle weave 20"x20" throw pillow covers - I initially wanted a lumbar pillow which they didn't offer, but now really like the look of the two pillows (again, lots of different colors).
• Laura Ashley Green Floral 100% Cotton Duvet Cover Set - I didn't think I'd really find a green floral duvet like the inspiration photo, so I was really pleased to find this set. It's on a major discount - and I've also seen this set at HomeGoods.

Curious about our farmhouse bedroom? You can see the unrecognizable way it started out here and more of how it looked after our DIY renovation.

Amazing Window Cleaning Cloth

I saw a blogger using this window cleaning e-cloth set on Instagram and was sold on not only how they windows turned out, but how quickly she cleaned them.

Though I have to admit I was still nervous because this set is a lot more expensive than regular microfiber cloths and I hoped I hadn't been duped.

Happy to report I wasn't! The set really does clean the windows quickly, efficiently, and streak-free (which my regular microfiber didn't).

To use it, you wet the darker green cloth - it's a different fabric than microfiber - and use that to wipe the window. You follow up with the dry waffle weave microfiber-ish towel and it dries and leaves the window crystal clear.

I really was amazed. And now I'm not dreading the window cleaning chore anymore!

Window Cleaning E-Cloth Set

May Reads

Hello Molly, Molly Shannon. This memoir was definitely sadder than I thought it would be, and actually very little of it was funny stories. It's mainly her life and her odd relationship with her dad after losing her mom and baby sister in a terrible accident when she was a toddler. I was hoping for more of her SNL days or stories from movie sets, but these parts were short (though what she did share was amazing - like she really did just throw herself around and onto chairs and other things that could've broken bones). She did some really crazy things as a kid and admits she was attracted to bad boys and doing "bad" things, though she didn't do many as she went to a Catholic school. Not sure I'd recommend unless you're a fan and want to know about her growing up years.

Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt. This book will be on my year end best-of list FOR SURE. I absolutely loved it! I wasn't sure about it for the longest time after seeing it on many other people's book lists because I thought it was about a talking octopus. And while an octopus does narrate some sections of the book to give his perspective, he doesn't talk to the people he encounters. In the first chapters I wasn't sure where the story was going - why do we meet people in Washington state and also in California that don't know each other? AH...keep reading, it is SO worth it. It kept my attention trying to figure that out, but it also was such a lovely and heartwarming story about friends, family and forgiveness. And the ending was perfection. Sigh. Run, don't walk to buy or put a hold!!

This Bird Had Flown, Susanna Hoffs. The author was part of the Bangles singing group back in the day, so that intrigued me right away, especially when I saw it was a book about a one-hit-wonder singer trying to write more songs. Like, she'll definitely get this right. And I'm sure the music part was spot-on and we've all known singers who made it big with a song and then you never hear from them again. What I didn't know was that it was going to become a romance with a near stranger, complete with sex scenes I had to skim past and lots of language I could've done without. In the middle was this whole mystery thing with an ex-girlfriend of the guy's that I could see where it was going a mile away, so I confess to skipping the last 1/3 of the book to get to the end. That pretty much tells you how I felt about the book, lol.

Why I Trust The Bible, William D. Mounce. This book is kind of like Evidence That Demands A Verdict, but on steroids. The author goes IN DEPTH on lots of topics like historical evidence that Jesus lived, did the gospel writers make things up, various text contradictions, and many more. He quotes many scholars, both Christian and not, and uses many examples. It was very affirming to remind me why the Bible can be trusted - but I do admit to skimming some of the more scholarly discussions of (pretty obscure) texts. It felt like a university class or something - I'd listen to a bit and then have to switch to something else for awhile to let it sink in, lol.

The Lincoln Highway, Amor Towles. Oh, gosh - where do I start with this one? (I'm going to be the odd person out again.) This is a very popular book I have seen on many lists getting 4 and 5 stars. It's set in the 1950s and billed as a road trip coming-of-age story, so I thought Brian and I would enjoy listening to it together. And we did - mainly for the fact that we can talk about it with each other - and not in the way you may think! It started out promising with the 18-year-old Emmett getting out of a juvenile correction facility and picking up his 8-year-old brother for a road trip from their farm to the west coast, as their father had recently died. I do enjoy this author's descriptive writing (I was one who liked A Gentleman in Moscow, even though it was slow and simply told of a life), and he paints a good picture of the times - dusty farmhouses, working hard, old cars, drive-ins, rivalries, etc.

BUT, there was an odd juxtaposition of comedy and violence. There were too many side stories. Too many times you hade to suspend belief. Two characters escaped from the place Emmett was and basically took over our road story. And too many characters were introduced and never got an ending, leaving us to wonder why they were there at all.

Above all, though, was the ending - it was odd, WAY different than the rest of the book, and basically ruined the rest of the book for both of us. I love how one reviewer on Amazon stated it: "It started out Huck Finn and ended Gone Girl." That's it in a nutshell. Plus, MAJOR storylines were never finished (Duchess's father, Sally, Ulysses, Emmett and Billy's trip and mom) - we were led along the whole book with these storylines and *poof* - nothing. So, obviously no recommendation here, lol.

Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingslover. Well, right before I started listening to this book, it won the Pulitzer prize, so this was in the back of my mind the whole time I was listening (by the way, the reader does a fantastic job). On one hand, I can see why it won - it well written fiction that tells an important tale about how people are kept in generational poverty, the beginning of the opioid crisis, and how children are treated (discarded?) when their parents are lost to addictions.

On the other hand - wow it is a hard slog to get through. Especially the middle. It's obviously not light reading and lots of bad things happen to both good and bad characters. Thankfully, it did have an upbeat ending - maybe even happy. And it was fun to see the characters Kingsolver used that were like the characters in David Copperfield (which she used as inspiration). That said, proceed with caution and be in the right state of mind when you pick this up (I am glad I read it).

EXTRA: I'm not linking to it, but wanted to warn anyone reading who hasn't yet read a Colleen Hoover book. I've seen her incredible run on the bestseller lists and thought Verity sounded interesting. Oh, gosh - so NOT. It's basically soft porn with a few scenes in between sex scenes, some of which are disturbing. There's also infanticide I read about and a tired "twist" I could see coming, but because I only made it a quarter way through this mess, I didn't read it myself. I actually felt yucky reading that much and returned the audiobook to Audible because I didn't even want it in my library anymore. So if you're at all like me as a reader, steer clear of this author who seems to be riding on those same "50 Shades of Gray" waves from a few years past.

Watching

Guardians of The Galaxy, Vol. 3 - theater. This may seem odd that Brian and I would go to the theater to see this movie, but we'd enjoyed the laughter and visual effects of the other Guardians, so we gave it a shot. You guys, it was SO good for one of these types of movies! There was a backstory of animal experimentation that instead of being only horrifying (though it was), it also ended up showing the power of friendship and loyalty. The Guardians were not trying to save the world (so tired of this line), but just to save their friend and fellow Guardian. Super surprised how much we enjoyed this.

That's it for another addition of the Good Things List!

If you'd like to see more of what I'm enjoying, you can check out all the Good Things Lists here. I'd love to know what you think - if you've tried any of these or what you'd recommend. Leave a comment below with your thoughts!

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